In the field of floors, more particularly for terraces, the mounting is done from one end of the surface to be covered as far as the other by fixing, as you go along, a floor board, a link and then another floor board. Link means a piece fixed to the floor and cooperating with the adjacent two boards in order to hold them fixed.
This type of device has several drawbacks, including the fixing of said link directly to the top face of a floor batten or of a timber strip, causing pull-away work. This pull-away work prematurely damages the fixing device in question owing to the repeated compression and/or attraction forces exerted on the link.
Other devices make provision for positioning two fixing devices over the width of the same floor batten, when two boards are joined. This therefore requires providing a floor-batten width at least twice the width of a fixing device. This may also have the drawback of having to put two floor battens against each other in order to be able to position two fixing devices alongside each other.
Fixing devices are also known comprising a clip having lateral flanges able to be engaged in grooves in boards and a screw passing through the clip in order to screw onto the top face of a floor batten. After the installation of the cladding elements, these clips no longer make it possible to access the screw and make dismantling impossible or makes it necessary to rework the whole of the structure as from the last board placed.
The use of this clip does however limit to a clearly determined choice of floor boards, the assembly grooves of which, intended for inserting said clip, have a profile suited to the cross-section of the flanges of the latter and precisely determine the height of the groove on the edge of the board.
In some versions the specific form of the grooves also has the drawback of having necessarily to mount boards in a specific direction, without any possibility of reversibility of the boards.
This clip also has the drawback, when it is positioned between the boards, of deforming and coming to bear on its heel at the top face of the floor batten. This “heeling” effect gives rise to a significant risk of loss of elasticity of the clip over time and causes a lack of pressure force and therefore of holding of the cladding elements.
There therefore exists the need to propose a fixing device for a cladding element that is sufficiently robust not to undergo deformation over time and cooperating with any type of cladding element, comprising grooves on the edge.